Image of the Day: August 9

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Agenda: Civil Liberties Oversight Board

By SCOTT SHANE

Back in 2003, the national commission on the Sept. 11 attacks advised that as the country bulked up its defenses against terrorism, the watchers themselves would require watching. Congress heeded the warning and created the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2004 to make certain more aggressive intelligence collection did not unduly infringe on Americans' rights.

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“We thought everything with a national security label on it was going to pass,” said Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the 9/11 commission and former governor of New Jersey, in an interview. “So we felt very strongly that there had to be some voice for civil liberties in the debate.”

Thus began a long, sad story - one quite relevant to The Agenda's look at the balance of security and civil liberty. It's probably fair to say that few governmental bodies have had a mor e troubled childhood than this one.

Over most of the eight years since it was formally established, the board has rarely functioned at all, let alone proven to be an aggressive watchdog. Neglected by the Bush and Obama administrations and hampered by political squabbles, it has been out of business altogether for five years.

“It's just been a total frustration,” said Mr. Kean, who has testified repeatedly to Congress about the need to get a strong board up and running.

Now, that may be happening. Or not, depending on who is talking.

The board got off to a slow start initially and held its first meeting in 2006. Critics noted that since it was then technically part of the White House, it could hardly be considered independent - a point a Democratic member, Lanny J. Davis, emphasized when he resigned in protest in 2007.

That year, heeding the complaints, Congress passed new legislation strengthening the board and removing it from the White House. But for nearly three years after taking office, President Obama did not even nominate a full slate of five members to the reconstituted board. He finally completed the nominations in December.

Last week, the Senate confirmed four of the five members - two Republicans, Elisabeth C. Cook, a lawyer at Wilmer Hale, and Rachel L. Brand, chief counsel for regulatory litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and two Democrats, James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Patricia M. Wald, a retired federal judge.

But because of the objection of unnamed senators, it took no action on the board's full-time chairman, David Medine, a Democrat and lawyer who long worked at the Federal Trade Commission and now is working temporarily at the Securities and Exchange Commission while awaiting Senate action.

The chairman is the board's only full-time member and has the authority to hire a staff. So wheth er the board can begin its work without Mr. Medine is uncertain; two of the confirmed board members said they had agreed not to comment for the time being.

One theory circulating in Washington is that the delay is Republican strategy: if Mitt Romney becomes president and the job is not yet filled, he will be able to appoint a member of his party to a six-year term as chairman.

Mr. Kean, a Republican, said he hoped that was not his party's strategy. He said Mr. Medine appears to be a qualified and not unduly partisan choice, and that further delay is unacceptable. “We were delighted that at least a majority of the board is confirmed,” he said. “My hope is they'll follow up with the chairman.”

Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel at The Constitution Project, which advocates for civil liberties in Washington, noted that cybersecurity bills proposed in Congress include a formal role for the board and said it is long since time for the board to go to work. The goal, she said, “is not to end national security programs but to make sure they're designed in a smart way.”

By all accounts, the 2007 law gives the board genuine clout. It will have access to even the most secret government programs, with subpoena power to enforce its demands. In principle, it could prove to be a significance check on the counterterrorism machinery built over the last decade. But to do so, the board will have to overcome a daunting history, even by Washington standards, of delay and neglect.

What do you think? Is it time to give the board a chance to operate? Or are there sufficient public and private watchdogs over the agencies whose job is to keep Americans safe from the likes of Al Qaeda?

In a Factory\'s Shadow, Fears About Health

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“By issuing carbon credits to companies for reducing emissions in the developing world, the United Nations aimed to inject cash into poor communities supporting the growth of sustainable industry,” Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote in The New York Times. But in the remote village of Nathkuva adjacent to Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited's coolant gas plant, “environmental groups and residents have been at loggerheads with the company over pollution since it opened in 1989.”

“The hulking factory that looms behind the tiny vegetable plots in this poor village is one of the largest manufacturers of a coolant gas that keeps air-conditioners whirring across the globe,” Ms. Rosenthal wrote.

Villagers complain of “rashes and birth defects and display warped ears of corn, which they contend are the result of pollution from the plant,” she wrote.

Mahesh Pandya, an engin eer and the executive director of the Indian environmental group Paryavaran Mitra, said he was shocked when he heard that Gujarat Fluorochemicals was going to be awarded United Nations carbon credits in 2005, soon after a nighttime gas leak from the factory prompted frustrated villagers to riot at the factory gates.

“I thought, how can they get United Nations carbon credits when they're making people sick and polluting the land?” Dr. Pandya said in his simple office in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat State, where he was surrounded by paperwork from his legal battles with the factory.

Read the full article.

Powerful Indian Financial Exchange Trades Accusations With Economist

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

One of India's fastest-growing financial exchanges “is suing a prominent economist claiming defamation,” Vikas Bajaj wrote in The New York Times. But Ajay Shah, the economist, says “the Multi Commodity Exchange of India is just using legal means to quiet a critic.”

“The case has raised fresh concerns about colonial-era laws that give significant power to policy makers, companies and individuals to muzzle critics and those they consider offensive,” Mr. Bajaj wrote.

“It has become a tool for intimidation,” said Karuna Nundy, a lawyer who has defended defamation cases but is not involved in Mr. Shah's cases.

The lawsuits follow a long tradition of Indian companies using defamation laws to punish journalists when their reputations have been attacked or to pre-empt attacks.

In 1998, Reliance Industries, one of India's largest conglomerates, obtain ed a court injunction against the publication of “The Polyester Prince,” a book about the rise of the company's founder Dhirubhai Ambani. Last year, an education company sued the magazine The Caravan, and secured a court order requiring it to remove an unflattering profile of the firm and its founder, Arindam Chaudhuri, from its Web site.

Read the full article.

Uttarakhand Floods Kill Scores and Displace Hundreds

By HARI KUMAR

Even as much of India is struggling with a weak monsoon, the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand is facing a very different emergency, as heavy rains and flash flooding have swept away homes, stranded villagers on high ground and left at least 28 people dead.

“Our biggest problem is connectivity now,” said S.C. Badoni, undersecretary of the state's disaster management department. “Some areas of Uttarkashi district are inaccessible because a major bridge on the river Ganges is washed away.”

Aerial surveys have revealed widespread property damage as surging currents in some tributaries of the Ganges river have overtopped their banks, shearing roadsides and wreaking havoc on low-lying villages. Property damage is already estimated at $110 million, according to a press release, which found that at least 402 families had been relocated to higher ground.

The heaviest rains poured down last weekend, stranding groups of tourists, including many Hindu pilgrims visiting holy sites near the Ganges. “Five hundred tourists beyond Uttarkashi, near Harsil, are still stranded,” Mr. Badoni said, adding that the state was using three helicopters in rescue efforts.

Civil administrators also have gotten help from the Indian Army and paramilitary forces, which are participating in relief and rescue operations. Among the dead are three firefighters who were washed away in a heavy current while trying to rescue stranded people, Mr. Badoni said. Some employees of the hydropower dam at Gangori also drowned in the surging waters.

Vijay Bahuguna, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, visited the disaster-hit areas of Matli and Gangori, where local officials were urged to quickly start reconstructing a bridge damaged by the high waters of the Ganges. Mr. Bahuguna said that navigating the state's hill regions has been difficult, with roads submerged in high water, meani ng that rescue teams cannot deliver food, medicines and cooking gas cylinders.

State leaders are distributing 5,400 rupees, or about $100, as “pocket money” to people affected by the flooding. Many local residents have angrily blamed the government for a slow response to the emergency. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also ordered a relief package valued at $27 million, according to a press release.

A Conversation With: Author Nilanjana Roy

By HEATHER TIMMONS

In her first novel, “The Wildings,” the literary critic and journalist Nilanjana Roy has imagined a world where the animal kingdom is a vast, interlinked network of species that communicate with each other and follows an inviolate, ancient code of conduct. Humans are known as “Bigfeet” and are just puzzling, oafish creatures that form the backdrop.

Set in Nizamuddin, a Delhi neighborhood where ancient Mughal monuments, narrow alleys, groomed parks and massive homes coexist, the book centers on a pack of telepathic stray cats, a housebound kitten named Mara and the huge battle that ensues when that code of behavior is broken.

Ms. Roy writes a literary column for The Business Standard and for The International Herald Tribune's Female Factor series. In an e-mail interview, Ms. Roy discussed what inspired her novel, which will be released later this month, and how she transitioned from being a reader to becoming a novelist.

Firstly, I have to ask â€" why telepathic cats? Where did this idea come from, and how did it become a book?

The Wildings began in Nizamuddin, when the original Mara - the cat who belonged to my partner and me - was about 4 years old. She was the quintessential inside cat, curious about the outside world and other cats, but reluctant to leave the house and explore. Mara spent her afternoons outside on the balcony, her whiskers extended, listening to something we couldn't hear. She watched the outside cats; I watched her, and gradually, it became apparent that most of feline life happened in the silences. There was a day when two of my cats, Tiglath and Mara, were watching me work. Both had their whiskers out, quivering as they tried to tell me that their food bowls were empty, and I saw them give each other a look. “She can't understand us,” the look said. “Poor whiskerless human.” That moment stayed with me.

I don't know whether cats are or aren't telepathic, but I do know that the spoken word - or meow - is the least part of their communication. Telepathy was an act of translation. It was a way of translating everything that lay outside language: the whisker twitches, the subtle movements of their tails, the invisible but obviously powerful scent networks, and my sense that cats treat time the way they do rooftops, leaping from the present back into ancient clan memories, the way they'd cross from one roof to another.

What are the things you found you needed to unlearn or let go, as a longtime literary critic and journalist, to write fiction and particularly a novel?

If I had said even once to myself, “I am writing fiction; I am writing a novel,” I would have stalled. I had spent my adult life, in publishing and the media, as a reader. That makes you acutely aware of how many books there are, and how little time: will you have room to read 3,000 books in your l ifetime? 2,000? 4,000?

The first thing I had to discard was the idea that you had to be as good as the greats - Atwood, Borges, Coetzee, Desai, Eliot, Fuentes - in order to write at all.

The second thing to go was the idea that spending a lifetime's apprenticeship as a reader will teach you anything at all about writing. Sitting down at the desk teaches you how to write, not reading about writing, not talking about writing.

And the third thing to release was the idea that writing was hard work. Finding the time was very hard work; writing “The Wildings,” and later, editing it with David Davidar and seeing the finished book emerge from the exuberant mess of the first draft, was pure happiness. When part of your job description as an adult is “making stuff up,” you know you've been very lucky in the way you've lived your life.

Can you tell us a little more about the writing process? How and when did you write?

At the dining table, mostly, and when our youngest cat, Bathsheba, will let me, at my desk in the drawing room. Unfortunately, Bathsheba thinks it's her desk, and she has sharper claws than me, so she wins.

The writing had to happen in between everything else - the journalism and the columns are how I make a living, so the fiction writing had to slide in sideways.

Most of “The Wildings” grew over long walks around Nizamuddin and in other parts of Delhi, from Mehrauli to Old Delhi. Once you start to see how many animals live alongside us, their lives parallel to ours, you can't stop seeing them. We excel at editing out the powerless and the voiceless in Delhi and making them invisible, whether they're animals or humans.

The market cats of INA, the friendly stray dogs in Mehrauli, the urban monkeys of Mayur Vihar all have very vivid and real lives, so it was just a question of eavesdropping on them. (Some of them are in the next book, not this one.)

It's a very visual process. The world of “The Wildings” - the cheels, the canal pigs, the complex web of relationships between the feral cats and the other cats in Nizamuddin - was sharp and complete right from the start. But each chapter began with an image: a kitten listening to the sound of barking dogs, a mongoose sated from the night's kills, a cheel remembering old battles. I used strawboards, note cards and very badly sketched maps - I can't draw a straight line - to keep the storyline straight, and otherwise it was a question of letting the imagination out for a long, long walk.

It is very tempting to read the human history of Nizamuddin, and in fact all of India, in “The Wildings.” Different groups coexist, skirmishing yet generally avoiding all-out warfare because they follow inviolate codes of conduct, until a massive battle ensues when nature's code gets perverted. Did you intend this as an allegory?

One of the joys about abandoning criticism for fiction is that it's up to other people to tell you what your book is about, which is such a relief. “The Wildings” was a love letter to Delhi in particular. The animal world mirrors both the savage territoriality of humans and the more tender side, the capacity for coexistence, the ability to do that very Indian thing and “adjust.” There was a darker subtext that I only became aware of once I'd finished writing. At its heart, it's about the tension between freedom and fear.

The worst predators in the book have a very simple reason for being vicious killers: they cannot imagine a world where creatures are not divided into predators and prey, or a world where predators and prey might choose to get along. The worst violence is not caused by the presence of evil; it's caused by a lack of imagination.

There's something medieval about the atmosphere of the book, with its clans, codes and verses, heroic deaths and unlikely heroes. If you had to pick your main influences for the book, what would you say they were?

I used to shoot as a teenager, (target shooting - I never shot people, even when tempted), and I still like battles - the bloody bits about gaffing people in the neck from “The Iliad,” the great set-pieces in Tolkien or George R.R. Martin. I grew up reading a certain kind of fantasy, and you can see the shadow of many of those books behind “The Wildings”: Richard Adams's “Watership Down,” Sukumar Ray's “Abol Tabol,” E.B. White's novels, “The Jungle Book.” And though it doesn't have his breadth, there's a small genuflection to Neil Gaiman's “Sandman.” But the medieval feel to “The Wildings” comes from Nizamuddin itself and the fact that this part of Delhi lives in several centuries at the same time. The cats here behave exactly like Mughal soldiers: brawling, carousing and going to war with great zeal in between hosting nonstop midnight qawwali sessions.

The verses the cats sing, particularly around fights â€" were they inspired by anything in particular?

An early version had ghazals and qawwalis, but those didn't work out; they didn't sound feline enough. This version was inspired by feline behavior. Every cat war I've witnessed begins with a long round of hissed and snarled ballads. I was just the transcriber.

There will be three parts, correct? Are these written? Did you intend to write a trilogy at the outset?

At least two. It was my editor who pointed out to me that I had three books running into one, in that first draft. I knew when I'd finished “The Wildings” that there was much more, and the second book is well under way. It's odd; I finished the first book by very carefully pretending I wasn't writing a novel at all, and I'll probably finish the trilogy by pretending that I'm not actually writing a trilogy.

Would you consider yourself more of an “inside cat” or an “outside cat?”

Definitely an inside cat, but with very long whi skers.

For Victim in Sikh Temple Shooting, a Life of Separation

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“When his chance came to go to America, Ranjit Singh promised his wife and three young children they would not be separated for too long,” Jim Yardley and Sruthi Gottipati wrote in The New York Times. “He was taking a position at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and hoped his family might join him there.”

“Weeks became months became 16 years,” Mr. Yardley and Ms. Gottipati wrote. His two preschool daughters grew up and each married, his infant son became a teenager.

Mr. Singh “became a voice on the telephone, calling almost daily,” they wrote, “promising that the family would be reunited as soon as his green card application was approved.”

He last called his family on Sunday, hours later Mr. Singh was killed in the Shooting rampage at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. “His stunned family, having lived for so long without him, is now preparing, finally, to travel to Wisconsin,” t o collect his body, Mr. Yardley and Ms. Gottipati wrote.

“He was a part of my life,” said his younger daughter, Jaspreet, 20, who was 4 years old when her father left. “He has done so much for us. Even today I miss him and want to meet him. I've never seen him before.”

Read the full article.

Lost Boys of the Line of Control

By BETWA SHARMA

Up in the mountains, a hushed stillness has descended on Dalaunja, the last village bordering the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Still, the open wounds of conflict haunt its crisp air on a sunny day. For more than a decade, this village simmered in the battle between the Indian Army and the militants. Dalaunja acquired a notoriety of sheltering insurgents coming from Pakistan.

As the conflict escalated in the 1990s, young men from the village crossed over to the portion of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan. The Indian government contends that several of them went to train as militants. But their families insist that they fled to escape the relentless harassment by Indian soldiers.

Since the fighting ebbed more than a decade ago, aging parents have been waiting for their boys to come home. “Or one chance to see them again,” said Ali Akbar, 90, whose two teenage sons left almost 20 years ago.

Neighbors recalled that Mr. Akbar took care of all his children after his wife died early. His 50-year-old daughter, Sonia Akbar, described how he used to strap milk around his chest to feed her younger brothers. Mr. Akbar, now weakened by illness, huddled close to the crackling firewood while his daughter tucked his frail frame into a thick blanket. “I never thought I would be without my boys in my last days,” he said.

Inhabitants of this secluded terrain endure hardships stemming both from conflict and nature. Those who perished in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, including members of the Akbar family, are buried in modest graves around the village. “You can't control death,” said Mr. Akbar. “But my soul is dead even as I breathe.”

The villages around the Line of Control, or L.O.C., are choked with tales of separation. In recent years, the Indian government has tried to find ways of uniting families, but progress has been slow because of the persistent air of suspicion between India and Pakistan, especially after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, as well as other logistical difficulties. For instance, the Indian government doesn't have exact records of how many people crossed over, how many of them became militants or who could still pose a threat.

“It is fundamentally difficult to have a policy on people who left illegally, in view of the complexities involved,” said Madhukar Gupta, a retired home secretary. “But genuine efforts have been made to soften the Line.”

Mr. Gupta said the Indian government sees greater people-to-people contact from both sides as a long-term investment in peace. This expectation led to initiating barter trade between India and Pakistan across the Line of Control in 2008. The skeletal mountain roads, once isolated, are now jammed with strikingly decorated trucks coming from as far away as Balochistan.

Since 2005, the government has been running a bus service across the Line of Control so that divided families can meet. Locals say that state-issued travel permits are mostly granted to families that split up during the 1947 partition. Government officials insist that these permits are for everyone, but they consider people who left during the 1990s more of a security concern, which leads to lengthier verification procedures.

“No doubt, there are bureaucratic hurdles on both sides,” said K. Skandan, joint secretary for Kashmir in the Home Ministry. “There is also lack of publicity so people don't have the correct information about such schemes especially in remote areas.”

There are currently over 12,000 Indian applications pending on Pakistan's side and more than 8,000 applications from Pakistan pending on the Indian side. Mr. Skandan said that Pakistan's processing of travel applications was so excruciatingly slow that India had to slow down as well. “We have to maintain a balance of people coming and going,” he said.

Some returnees come home without any kind of permit. Mohammed Aslam Mir, who left Dalaunja in 1990, decided to return to India after having had no contact with his family for nearly a decade. He never heard that his father had died during that time. Mr. Mir, now 37, was the only one of five brothers to go away. “I had seen people being beaten up by the army and I was scared,” he said.

Mr. Mir described how Kashmiris on the other side gave food and shelter to the men who arrived. “I have no words to describe their kindness,” he said. The Pakistan government also gave them 1,000 Pakistani rupees ($11 at current exchange rates) monthly. But Mr. Mir was determined to return. “My life is my family - maybe because I was so spoiled being the youngest,” he said. “My heart had no choice but to risk going back.”

So in the summer of 1999, Mr. Mir stood at the edge of a narrow ravine that separated the Pakistan si de of Kashmir from Dalaunja village. Home was a short walk away. But Mr. Mir didn't want to sneak in illegally. He shouted to the villagers to find someone at the nearest army post. “I was told to raise my hands and walk slowly toward them,” he said. “And then I surrendered.”

After being kept under surveillance for three years, Mr. Mir was issued a card that allows Kashmiris living near the Line of Control to move about freely. Mr. Mir explained that it was easier for him to return because he had consciously avoided putting down roots on the other side, staying unmarried and jobless. “People want to come back, but they can't displace their entire family,” he said. “That's life.”

In 2010, the Indian government announced a policy to allow “misguided youth” to return with their families. So far, only 17 families have returned under this program. More people are slipping back illegally across the Indo-Nepal border. The authorities have identified 42 such cases, and they know that more people are making their way back. Even illegal returnees, if not considered a direct threat, are being allowed to assimilate into the mainstream.

The Indian security forces are not happy with the 2010 policy, criticizing this leniency on the grounds that the government is jeopardizing security in its haste to achieve normalcy in Kashmir.

Mr. Skandan from the Home Ministry argued that people bent on stirring up trouble will slip into India, with or without such a policy. “You cannot have any policy with zero risk,” he said. “But having a return policy is important because it gives people trying to come back psychological relief that they will be welcomed.”

Braj Raj Sharma, the Jammu and Kashmir home secretary, said that “it had been made very difficult” for potential returnees on the Pakistan-controlled side to get travel papers. “It was felt for various reasons that people were not being able to approach the Indian High Commission,” he said, adding that the Indian side had received reports of militants threatening retribution against those who wanted to leave. “We're trying to work around it.”

The matter, however, has not been taken up with Pakistan through official channels.

Mr. Skandan pointed out that Islamabad cannot openly block India's international policy, but it could curtail people's movements. The senior official, however, was more concerned that the returnees could be at risk because they may be persecuted by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's spy agency, and Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba for wanting to return to India.

Until villagers can move freely over the Line of Control, they will have to take solace in the small ways they have bridged distances.

Naseema Abbasi, 32, was 10 years old when her father, now 60, left. “The army people threatened him night and day,” she said. “Otherwise, who in their ri ght mind leaves their family?”

Then her mother died in the 2005 earthquake. Mrs. Abbasi now lives with her husband and five siblings in Urusa village, which touches the Line of Control.

On the day she got married, nine years ago, Mrs. Abbasi got a big surprise. She described how a sudden commotion disrupted the ceremony and everyone ran to the edge of the village. In the distance, across the Line of Control, stood their father, who had come to glimpse his daughter's wedding.

“We don't know how he did it, but it was wonderful,” said Adil Abbasi, his 22-year-old son. “He was crying, and then we were crying.”